As Many As 200 Sickened In Seattle Tower Norovirus Outbreak

Norovirus is highly contagious and causes nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

Donna Gordon Blankinship

12/08/2015 05:18 pm ET

ASSOCIATED PRESS

SEATTLE (AP) — As many as 200 people have gotten sick in a norovirus outbreak at a downtown Seattle office building, health officials reported Monday.

Illness at the Russell Investments Center grew exponentially after a catered event in the building, but several cases were reported before the event last Tuesday, according to Public Health-Seattle & King County, which is still investigating the outbreak that began last week.

Between 175 and 200 cases have been reported to the health department either independently or through a survey of people who went to the catered event in the building.

“We anticipate that number is probably low,” said Dr. Meagan Kay, medical epidemiologist for communicable diseases with the Seattle and King County Public Health Department.

Two people spent one night in a hospital because of norovirus, and another eight people were treated in emergency rooms during the past week.

A bolide, or exploding meteor, similar to this one was spotted in the night sky over the Lower Mainland and Western Washington on Friday night.

Photograph by: NASA , The Province

Tina Robertson was just trying to catch a stray cat out in front of her property when she heard it.

“It freaked me right out,” she said.

Then she looked up to see a “big ball of fire.”

“It was moving like hell,” she said. “It was big, but not as big as that one in Russia.”

What she and other witnesses as far afield as Seattle and Nanaimo seem to have seen around 6:50 p.m. Friday was a type of meteor known as a bolide. Bolides are as bright as a full moon; they’re a meteor that doesn’t just burn up as it travels through the atmosphere, it explodes.

Washington mudslide’s confirmed death toll rises to 16

The confirmed death toll for the Washington state mudslide rose to 16 on Tuesday night, and officials said rescuers might have located eight more bodies. If so, that would bring the toll to 24.

The day was rainy and difficult for the more than 200 rescue personnel scouring the mud and slurry just east of Oso, using cadaver dogs and sometimes their hands to pick through the wreckage.

“We didn’t find any signs of life; we didn’t locate anybody alive,” Travis Hots, chief of Snohomish County Fire District 21, told reporters. “Our condolences go out to the families that have lost people here.”

About 49 homes were smashed in northwestern Washington, about an hour north of Seattle, when a massive segment of land cut away from a hill along the Stillaguamish River on Saturday.

Rescuers have found no survivors since the first day, and have been holding out diminishing hope for a miracle rescue. Instead, the death toll has continued to rise, with two more bodies recovered Tuesday, Hots said.

Darrington, Washington (CNN) — Brenda Neal was still at the firehouse at midnight, watching as rescuers caked with mud returned from the search for survivors of a massive landslide in rural Washington state.

But they had no answers for her about her missing husband, Steven.

There was despair on their faces, she said.

Rescuer: Houses exploded from the mud

Rescuers on Tuesday continued to battle debris and mud — with the consistency of quicksand in some places — in the search for survivors, but hopes dimmed as news broke that more bodies were found.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t find any signs of life,” Snohomish County Fire District 21 Chief Travis Hots told reporters during a briefing.

The number of dead climbed to as high as 24 with the recovery Tuesday of two more bodies and another eight believed to have been located in the debris.

Authorities did not immediately release the identities of the dead nor did they provide details about where the bodies were found.

At least 176 people are unaccounted for. Officials have stressed those unaccounted for are not necessarily all victims of the disaster. They say they believe many names have been duplicated.

Three sheriff’s deputies who specialize in missing persons cases have begun reviewing the lists to get a more accurate count,Snohomish County Emergency Management Director John Pennington said.

Steven Neal’s family holds out hope, despite discouraging signs.

Neal is a plumber who was on a service call in the area where the landslide hit.

“None of us feel like he’s gone,” Brenda Neal said.

Her daughter, Sara, agreed: “I think if anyone had a chance to getting through, it would be him.”

The waiting came to end Tuesday for the family of U.S. Navy Cmdr. John Regelbrugge, 49, whose body and that of his dog were found by his brothers, his sister-in-law, Jackie Leighton, told CNN. Still missing is Regelbrugge’s wife, she said.

On Monday, search efforts yielded a grim result — six bodies.

But searchers still are going through the area with the hopes of making rescues, Pennington said earlier Tuesday morning.

“I believe in miracles, and I believe people can survive these events. They’ve done it before,” and they can do it again, he told reporters.

The landslide covered about a square mile and was caused by groundwater saturation tied to heavy rain in the area over the past month. It affected Oso, with a population of about 180, and Darrington, a town of about 1,350.

Authorities have been warning the search area remains unstable

A volunteer rescue worker was injured Tuesday while working in an area where the landslide struck, according to a statement released by the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office. The rescue worker was hit in the head by debris kicked up “in helicopter wash,” it said.

President Barack Obama, in the Netherlands on Tuesday, asked that “all Americans to send their thoughts and prayers to Washington state and the community of Oso.”

Obama said he had spoken with Gov. Jay Inslee and signed an emergency declaration.

Early hopeful signs, such as the rescue of a 4-year-old boy on the day of the landslide, have faded for some.

Up to 24 dead, 176 missing in Wash. landslide

Navy commander among dead

DARRINGTON, Washington (CNN) —Brenda Neal was still at the firehouse at midnight, watching as rescuers caked with mud returned from the search for survivors of a massive landslide in rural Washington state.

But they had no answers for her about her missing husband, Steven.

There was despair on their faces, she said.

Rescuers on Tuesday continued to battle debris and mud — with the consistency of quicksand in some places — in the search for survivors, but hopes dimmed as news broke that more bodies were found.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t find any signs of life,” Snohomish County Fire District 21 Chief Travis Hots told reporters during a briefing.

The number of dead climbed to as high as 24 with the recovery Tuesday of two more bodies and another eight believed to have been located in the debris.

Authorities did not immediately release the identities of the dead nor did they provide details about where the bodies were found.

At least 176 people are unaccounted for. Officials have stressed those unaccounted for are not necessarily all victims of the disaster. They say they believe many names have been duplicated.

Three sheriff’s deputies who specialize in missing persons cases have begun reviewing the lists to get a more accurate count, Snohomish County Emergency Management Director John Pennington said.

Steven Neal’s family holds out hope, despite discouraging signs.

Neal is a plumber who was on a service call in the area where the landslide hit.

“None of us feel like he’s gone,” Brenda Neal said.

Her daughter, Sara, agreed: “I think if anyone had a chance to getting through, it would be him.”

The waiting came to end Tuesday for the family of U.S. Navy Cmdr. John Regelbrugge, 49, whose body and that of his dog were found by his brothers, his sister-in-law, Jackie Leighton, told CNN. Still missing is Regelbrugge’s wife, she said.

On Monday, search efforts yielded a grim result — six bodies.

But searchers still are going through the area with the hopes of making rescues, Pennington said earlier Tuesday morning.

While Washington State is still adjusting to many changes since legalizing recreational marijuana—from growing space size to the number of licenses to give out—one of the biggest changes may be Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) employees going to work in the private sector. Reason TV sat down with Patrick Moen, a former supervisory special agent with the DEA, who now works as compliance director and senior counsel at Privateer Holdings, a private equity firm that invests in cannabis.

“The more law enforcement officers acknowledge that prohibition [of marijuana] is wrong, the better off society is going to be,” said Moen. At the DEA he specialized in wiretaps and worked on cases varying from busting heroin and methamphetamine rings to rooting out pot and painkiller dealers. “Taking that first step is often the most difficult one, it just so happened that I was the one to take it.”

Moen says that he got a lot of support from friends and former colleagues, the latter of which privately asked him for jobs. He says people may be surprised to know that an overwhelming majority of agents he interacted with didn’t feel marijuana should be a priority for the DEA.

“Well, my own personal point of view is that drugs like methamphetamine and heroin have legitimate, observable, harmful effects to the user and people around the user and you definitely cannot say the same thing about cannabis,” says Moen.

Reason TV presented Moen with numbers from the Department of Justice’s 2013 National Drug Threat Assessment indicating an increase in the availability of methamphetamine and heroin in the U.S.

“There are some cases of mine in particular that I am very proud of that I can look back at and say that I had a measurable effect on this community for some period of time before it bounced back,” says Moen. “I don’t think anyone was under the illusion that we were going to stop it, that we were going to win the war on drugs.”

Moen is aware of the criticism of the DEA and the war on drugs in general.

“I think there is a certain subset of the population that views DEA agents as jackbooted thugs, that have an agenda to oppress them…. But it’s just another job, and there are guys there that are competent, and there are guys there that are less so, but they are all trying to do the job the best that they can.”

Privateer Holdings is looking to invest in businesses that surround the legal marijuana industry like the cannabis review site, Leafly.com, which also helps users find different strains and locations of cannabis around them. Leafly claims to have a website and app that generate more than more than 2.3 million visits a month.

The private cannabis industry isn’t without worries though. CEO at Privateer Holdings, Brenden Kennedy, told Bloomberg TV on January 28, that banking in the marijuana industry was nearly impossible because banks were concerned with the taboo nature of the product. “We have been kicked out of two banks, two large banks, very unceremoniously,” said Kennedy, who also said at least one employee at Privateer Holdings had experienced trouble with his personal bank account.

“The biggest risk we see is from the federal government. Bureaucrats and politicians are always the last ones to accept change,” said Kennedy.

SEATTLE — There are over 20 cities in Washington State that use red light cameras and they’re split between two different vendors. In Seattle it’s American Traffic Solutions. The other is a company called Redflex.

Whether you consider them big brother or an electronic cop that can watch dangerous intersections all day every day, traffic cameras are controversial.

One of the things that make them that way is perception over the money they generate, which in our state is $124 a ticket.

Watchdog organizations like bancams.com say profits for the companies are a big incentive to win contracts with cities at any cost. And in Chicago allegations are swirling around a scandal involving Redflex and how far some company sales employees were willing to go to win millions in business.

Fired photo radar exec. says he bribed Colorado officials

VIRGINIA BEACH — A former top executive of the company that runs red-light and speed-camera systems in Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Newport News says he and others gave “lavish gifts and bribes” to government officials in Colorado and elsewhere to secure and retain their business.

None of the three cities say they’ve received anything from Redflex, the Arizona-based company that runs the city’s camera-radar systems. The contracts between Redflex and the three cities were not available on Friday, but Virginia Beach says its contract for the current fiscal year tops $700,000.

According to legal documents, former Redflex Executive Vice President Aaron Rosenberg says he and his bosses routinely gave out everything from sporting-event tickets to rounds of golf and meals to government officials in charge of deciding whether to hire and retain the company.

I can attest to the validity of this claim as I have seen with my very own eyes. This is not an isolated case for Seattle alone. Similar boxes are appearing on utility poles all over the Austin, Pflugerville and Round Rock areas here in Texas, equipped with cameras. They are not just facing the expressways they are also facing the streets.

If they are just cameras then why do they require their own poles and antennae?

There are plenty of cameras already in place for traffic surveillance. So then it begs the question……

Why are these different and for what purpose?

The amount of cameras going up is incredible and quite eery considering all the information becoming available on surveillance every day.

So ,our national economic situation is dire enough to warrant budget cuts affecting the funds used to feed the poor, but it does not apply to wasting our tax dollars on expanding the surveillance state?

Look around your town or city and see for yourself, you may be surprised at how many you may find there.

What Are The Off-White Boxes That Are Going Up On Utility Poles All Over Seattle?

By Michael Snyder, on November 11th, 2013

The Big Brother control grid is constantly growing and expanding all over America. Right now, a “wireless mesh network” is in the process of being installed in Seattle that some believe will ultimately have the capability of tracking the location of every wireless device in the city. If you live in downtown Seattle, just look for the little off-white boxes that are being attached to utility poles all over the place. You can see a bunch of pictures of these little boxes right here. Meanwhile, other major U.S. cities have been installing vast networks of surveillance cameras and listening devices. We are being told that such measures will help police “solve more crime”. We are being told that such measures will “keep people safe”. But what about our privacy? Doesn’t that count for something? What about the Fourth Amendment? Are our most cherished liberties and freedoms going to be thrown into the trash just because we live “in a more dangerous world”?

The Stranger is a Seattle newspaper that recently did a major story about this “wireless mesh network” that has been going up all over the city. What they found out is extremely disturbing…

If you’re walking around downtown Seattle, look up: You’ll see off-white boxes, each one about a foot tall with vertical antennae, attached to utility poles. If you’re walking around downtown while looking at a smartphone, you will probably see at least one—and more likely two or three—Wi-Fi networks named after intersections: “4th&Seneca,” “4th&Union,” “4th&University,” and so on. That is how you can see the Seattle Police Department’s new wireless mesh network, bought from a California-based company called Aruba Networks, whose clients include the Department of Defense, school districts in Canada, oil-mining interests in China, and telecommunications companies in Saudi Arabia.

The question is: How well can this mesh network see you?

How accurately can it geo-locate and track the movements of your phone, laptop, or any other wireless device by its MAC address (its “media access control address”—nothing to do with Macintosh—which is analogous to a device’s thumbprint)? Can the network send that information to a database, allowing the SPD to reconstruct who was where at any given time, on any given day, without a warrant? Can the network see you now?

The Seattle police did not want to talk to the newspaper about this.

Neither did the Department of Homeland Security.

But the newspaper did find some technical experts that actually work with Aruba products that were willing to talk…

After reviewing Aruba’s technical literature, as well as talking to IT directors and systems administrators around the country who work with Aruba products, it’s clear that their networks are adept at seeing all the devices that move through their coverage area and visually mapping the locations of those devices in real time for the system administrators’ convenience. In fact, one of Aruba’s major selling points is its ability to locate “rogue” or “unassociated” devices—that is, any device that hasn’t been authorized by (and maybe hasn’t even asked to be part of) the network.

Which is to say, your device. The cell phone in your pocket, for instance.

The user’s guide for one of Aruba’s recent software products states: “The wireless network has a wealth of information about unassociated and associated devices.” That software includes “a location engine that calculates associated and unassociated device location every 30 seconds by default… The last 1,000 historical locations are stored for each MAC address.”

Will these kinds of systems soon be going up in major cities all across the country?

That is a very good question.

Meanwhile, it has also been revealed that very powerful listening grids have been installed in more than 70 cities around the country…

The Washington Post recently published a feature length article on gunshot detectors, known as ShotSpotter, which detailed how in Washington DC there are now, “at least 300 acoustic sensors across 20 square miles of the city,” microphones wrapped in a weather-proof shell that can detect the location of a sound down to a few yards and analyze the audio using a computer program.

While the systems are touted as “gunshot detectors,” as the New York Times reported in May 2012, similar technology is already installed in over 70 cities around the country, and in some cases it is being used to listen to conversations.

“In at least one city, New Bedford, Mass., where sensors recorded a loud street argument that accompanied a fatal shooting in December, the system has raised questions about privacy and the reach of police surveillance, even in the service of reducing gun violence,” states the report.

That same article from Infowars.com also discussed the “Intellistreets” lighting systems that are being installed around the nation that are capable of listening to and recording conversations on a massive scale…

As we have also previously highlighted, numerous major cities in the Unites States are currently being fitted with Intellistreets ‘smart’ street lighting systems that also have the capability of recording conversations and sending them directly to authorities via wi-fi.

As we reported on Sunday, the Las Vegas Public Works Department has begun testing the devices, which act as surveillance cameras, Minority Report-style advertising hubs, and Homeland Security alert systems. As ABC 7 reported in 2011, they are “also capable of recording conversations.”

If you are reading this article in the downtown area of a major U.S. city, there is a good chance that you are surrounded by a whole host of surveillance cameras, listening devices and automated license plate readers. The authorities probably already know more about you and your movements than you ever dared to imagine.

This map traces the course of the Seattle fault across Puget Sound, through the city and across Lake Washington to the Eastside.

The next big earthquake on the Seattle fault could trigger destructive landslides in the city, potentially affecting a much larger area than previously thought, and in areas outside those currently considered to be landslide prone, a new University of Washington-led study shows.

“A major quake along the Seattle fault is among the worst-case scenarios for the area, since the fault runs just south of downtown.” said Kate Allstadt, a UW doctoral student in Earth and space sciences. “Our study shows the need for dedicated studies on seismically induced landsliding.”

Allstadt is the lead author of a paper documenting the research, published online Oct. 22 by the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America. Co-authors are John Vidale, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences and Allstadt’s doctoral adviser, and Arthur Frankel of the U.S. Geological Survey, which funded the research.

The research offers a framework for simulating hundreds of earthquake scenarios for the Seattle area.

This map traces the course of the Seattle fault across Puget Sound, through the city and across Lake Washington to the Eastside.

While the region is vulnerable to deep earthquakes, shallow earthquakes and catastrophic quakes in the Cascadia subduction zone off the Pacific Northwest coast, a shallow crustal quake on the Seattle fault would likely be most damaging to the city.

The Seattle fault crosses Bainbridge Island and cuts across West Seattle and Beacon Hill, just south of downtown, then crosses Lake Washington to the eastern suburbs and the Cascade foothills. The last major quake on that fault was about 900 A.D., and scientists have documented that it triggered giant landslides that caused large tracts of forest land to slide to the bottom of Lake Washington.

The Seattle Basin that underlies much of the city amplifies ground motion and generates strong seismic waves that tend to increase the duration of the shaking. Allstadt said the hazard of landslides triggered by earthquakes is very high and warrants greater attention, in Seattle and in other areas prone to the phenomenon.

The deadline is Sunday, September 1 for campers to move out of the Nickelsville tent city.

The Seattle City Council voted in July to close the homeless encampment and help residents find more permanent places to live, but on its final night, the camp is as full as ever.

More than 100 people were still staying at the camp, and while work was still being done here and there throughout Saturday, there was still a lot of work left to be done.

A walk through Nckelsville Saturday revealed how unlikely it is all will be gone by Sunday

“You can see we’re really doing our best, but we’re really short on labor, wheelbarrows, money,” said Michael Montanari, one of the camp’s “move masters” in charge of coordinating relocation efforts to the three new designated sites throughout Seattle. He says the move will happen.

Related:

SEATTLE — A heat wave began Friday in Western Washington is expected to continue until mid-week.

An excessive heat watch is in effect from Monday morning through Monday evening for the Everett, Seattle and Tacoma areas.

Temperatures will rise to the upper 80s Sunday and to the low 90s Monday. Overnight lows will be around 60.

The record for July 1 at Sea-Tac Airport is 87 degrees, set most recently in 1995. And the record for July 2 is 92, set in 1968.

Temperatures east of the Cascades may break 100 on Monday and Tuesday.

In Spokane, weekend temperatures in the 90s are expected during the Hoopfest 3-on-3 basketball tournament. The event is expected to draw 28,000 players and up to 200,000 people downtown. They are being warned to drink plenty of fluids to avoid heat-related problems.

The downside of great weather is the risks some people take to enjoy it at rivers, lakes and beaches in Washington. Keep in mind the water in rivers, lakes and the Puget Sound is cold.

“Most hot weather deaths are from drowning because rivers are fed by melting snow,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Chris Burke. “You go in and get into trouble right away.”

Punishing heat wave hits western U.S.

DEATH VALLEY, Calif. Scorching heat blistered the Southwest on Saturday, where highs between 115 and 120 degrees were expected for parts of Arizona, Nevada and California through the weekend.

Forecasters said temperatures in sunbaked Las Vegas could match the record of 117 degrees Saturday; as of late afternoon, it was 115 degrees. Phoenix hit 119 degrees by mid-afternoon, breaking the record for June 29 that was set in 1994. And large swaths of California sweltered under extreme heat warnings, which are expected to last into Tuesday night — and maybe even longer.

Dan Kail was vacationing in Las Vegas when he heard that the temperature at California’s Death Valley could approach 130 degrees this weekend. He didn’t hesitate to make a trip to the desert location that is typically the hottest place on the planet.

“Coming to Death Valley in the summertime has always been on the top of my bucket list,” the 67-year-old Pittsburgh man said. “When I found out it might set a record I rented a car and drove straight over. If it goes above 130 I will have something to brag about.”

The forecast called for Death Valley to reach 128 degrees Saturday as part of a heat wave that has caused large parts of the western U.S. to suffer. At 4 p.m. PDT, the temperature was 122 degrees. Death Valley’s record high of 134 degrees, set a century ago, stands as the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth.

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West to get even hotter

Meteorologist Jeff Berardelli of CBS Station WFOR Miami reported Saturday evening that we are going to see a prolonged heat wave continue for the next several days in the desert southwest. Sunday could see high temperatures near 130 degrees in Death Valley and these temperatures are going to be very slow to cool down over the next several days — that heat wave is going to stick around.

A couple hours south in Baker, the temperature was expected to peak at 120 degrees in the road tripper’s oasis in the Mojave Desert on Interstate 15. The strip of gas stations and restaurants between Los Angeles and Las Vegas is known by travelers for the giant thermometer that often notes temperatures in the triple digits.

This graphical forecast provided by the National Weather Service shows projected high temperatures across the United States for June 29, 2013.

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